Posted
by
kdawson
on Friday November 27, 2009 @11:33AM
from the not-too-swift dept.

An anonymous reader points out a blog post reporting that on Monday The EU Council is set to give US intelligence services full access to SWIFT banking data, despite a unanimous call by the European Parliament not to do so. "The move of SWIFT the data server to Switzerland would be an excellent opportunity to stop the nearly unlimited access of US authorities on EU bank transactions. But EU justice and interior ministers are apparently keen [on agreeing to] a deal as soon as possible, on 30 November. Why 30 November? Because one day later, on 1 December 2009, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty will be in force and would allow the European Parliament to play a major role in the negotiations of the deal with the US. A deal one day before will be a slap in the face to democracy in the EU. ... [W]hile the US will be able to access EU banking data, no access to US banking data by EU [authorities] is being foreseen."

what is so lacking about the EU's ability to make and investigate the above claims?

The EU lacks the information. It is not allowed to spy on its own citizens (sound familiar?). How do you get information about your own citizens in spite of privacy protection laws? You let someone else do the dirty work, deflect all the blame and get the analyzed data back. Who cares that the structure and dynamics of the entire EU economy are presented to a foreign country as a "side effect"?

What is so lacking? Spine AKA 'political will'. Muslim minorities are much larger and growing much faster in Europe than the US, and Europeans are afraid to poke much at them even legitimately or else be labelled 'reactionary bigots' or worse 'American lapdogs' not only by the muslims but also other Europeans who are too progressive to care about people bombing trains.

On the one had, you are completely right, a lot of wholly innocent people are going to be put through a wringer because they did something

The Home Office received 95 extradition requests from the US between 1 January 2004 and 31 July 2009; 47 of these have taken place, with 36 ongoing, five withdrawn by the US and seven refused by UK authorities. The UK has made 42 extradition requests to the US during the same period; 27 of these have taken place, with 12 ongoing, three withdrawn by the UK and none refused. The numbers of requests made between the UK and its extradition partners are often unequal – Spain extradited 104 people to us between 2004 and 2008 and received 27 – but this signifies no imbalance in the governing arrangements.

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but that one data point makes me question what orifice that extradition 'fact' came from, no matter how truthy it sounds.

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but that one data point makes me question what orifice that extradition 'fact' came from, no matter how truthy it sounds.

Well, good for you. Question away! In the time you took to write that post, you could have typed "US UK extradition treaty" into Wikipedia (or found the first link to it on Google), read up on the Extradition Act 2003, and discovered that what I wrote was fair and your statistics do nothing to refute it. Never mind, though, this is Slashdot, and it's far more fun to use the words "orifice" and "truthy" than to actually check facts anyway.

... does the 30th of November sound like a great day to pull pranks like false fire-alarms and what-not to interfere with the deal? For once I my life I would condone civil disobedience, and for once it might even have an impact.

David Brin in his novel: Earth [wikipedia.org] had some backstory (which is not in that link) about a war on the "Gnomes". This was a war on secrecy in banking. The story went along the lines of it was a purging moment in human history, in secrecy evil hides. Purging the "Gnomes" stripped a great deal of power from the corrupted mechanisms of society. Now, with that said any information collected will be abused but this offers some perspective.

Excellent! A little deeper digging has revealed: The Transparent Society [google.com] (Google Books, preview a bit online!) which is a non-fiction work by him, an author of the caliber of mind to successfully have made his predictions in Earth. It is summarized on this wiki page: Here [wikipedia.org]. Now I will admit that I have not read that particular work but I trust Brin as enough of an authority that I will assume its mostly good! Now I am going to have to go and peruse that text!;)

You have heard of the term privacy have you?There is a difference between “secrecy” and privacy!

But hey, because of a novel on some imaginary things, you now think that there must be evil hiding there, and so all privacy must be eliminated.Way to go...

I got news for you. My government friends and I had a chat, and we think that your brain and your bowel are covered in way too much secrecy! And as “secrecy hides evil”, we asked our American friends here, to stake you onto our new inne

Aggregate information can be used to spot any trend with the appropriate algorithm. Aggregate information may also not be completely private, again, with the appropriate algorithm. The balance I believe is to release aggregate information to trusted neutral parties only. They will only be trusted if they have a mandate to not employ algorithms that seek to negate privacy. However, and being neutral, they must also have a mandate to uphold their principles or purpose to be given the information to begin

It's part of the solution at least! You establish monitoring first then you chip away at it until neutral parties have access to the information. Everything is summed by what preceded it, if manipulated skillfully the advantages can be tipped in the favor of the public interest. All you need is debate and advocacy. Shameless plug, please see my sig.

Doesn't stop people here from constantly citing 1984 (completely ignoring that the book wasn't that much about surveillance but socialism gone wrong, but that's not as convenient now, is it?) or Brave New World.

I'm actually promoting newspeak from 84. But with a key difference, the retention and accessibility of what came before. I believe we do need to constantly revise what we believe to remain relevant but I do not believe it should be centralized as that is despotism. Shameless plug, see my signature for a mechanism that would provide a neutral debating forum full of checks and balances to offset human nature. It is inspired from the real world, see the link to the values page, and I see it as a piece of t

Americans are nice. Generally very open, sociable people who will be happy to strike up a conversation with you if they notice you're from a country they've been to or some such. The United States of America (and, by extension, the people making up the American government) is a sociopathic asshole of a country that constantly betrays the principle it was founded on and follows international law only when it feels like it (and tries to get the law amended so it can do whatever it wants).

Huge difference. I'd be happy to come over to the place where the Americans live and spend some time there - if only that place didn't happen to be America.

I'm American and I've traveled overseas quite a bit. I didn't run into a lot of hate.

I'm a euro and I spend a lot of time in the US. While staying there can be absolutely delightful on a superficial level (good food, wild nature, lots of space, polite yet informal people, clean cities), I've learned to keep my mouth shut, and just zone out whenever a discussion takes place. When asked for my opinion, I've learned to answer only in variations on 'dunno', 'uhm' and 'you're right'. When people ask where I'm from, I'll make up a word that may sound like a real place to avoid everything I do, say or think reflecting on an entire country. Anything short of blind devotion to all things American, and in fact disagreeing with an American may be taken as anti-American, ungrateful and arrogant and a reason to put you right back in your place. I don't encounter 'hate' much, but a lot of contempt. The sudden darkening of people's moods when the realization hits them 'wait a minute, this euro thinks he's an equal'.

Anyway, it can be avoided by playing the quiet type, sticking to superficial and / or work related subjects and let them blame your apparent lack of an opinion or ego on the years of communism in your native Molvania.

Yes, that's a big problem with them, the thinking that their way is the only one that can be. I travel a lot and also hang out on travel forums. The funniest I ever read there was from a fellow German living in Nicaragua. He said that the coast is overrun with American expats, who have been living there for ten or twenty years, don't know one word of Spanish and still demand that the locals speak their language. What a fucked up life that must be.

Is it worth catching corporate criminals at the cost of civil privacy?

Also, there are lots of ways around Taxation laws, legally, that require NO money off-shore. Using Charity receipts, holding companies, and company expenses, you can essentially cut your profits down so you don't get taxed as much while everything you want to purchase is owned by various companies (which you own but not directly).

It's kind of like you run company A, and Company B owns your car, Company C owns your house, Company D buys food, etc etc, and while the paper trail exists, theres nothing illegal about it. Shaw Communications (Cable company here in Canada) has mastered this technique. Yeah, the CEO is driving his Porsche around Calgary, but on paper he makes under 30k a year.

Is it worth catching corporate criminals at the cost of civil privacy?

No, absolutely not. Mostly because we DON'T have to wholly sacrifice one for the other. I'm all for a more streamlined and formalized(read accountability) process for getting some kind of "international warrant" for this data, but FULL ACCESS!?!?! F*** fishing expeditions.

Is it worth catching corporate criminals at the cost of civil privacy?

There is very little "civil privacy" to lose for Europeans; European governments already have access to this information about European citizens.

But if Europeans somehow take offense that the US specifically has access to this data (rather than just every podunk European government from olive country to the Baltic), they can take that complaint right back to their own politicians and companies: the only reason the US can demand this data

You really think that's the intention? Are you so delusional that you think this is going to be used against the big tax cheats? The very same that fund the politicians that put these ideas into reality?

They'll give access to all inter-bank transactions. The whole issue started with the revelation that US intelligence had access to SWIFT data through SWIFT's US data center. SWIFT then shifted its operation to its other data centers and will cease channeling EU transaction data through the US data center by the end of the year. So the loss of access for the US spies is the SWIFT data, but the treaty will give them access to all inter-bank transactions, even those which are not processed by SWIFT. This is a classic rebound technique: The EU cannot spy on its own citizens like that, but they do get information back from US spies.

Who's to blame? The US, for shamelessly exploiting the people they often call their friends? The EU council, for betraying their people? Why choose...

If this goes through on Monday, there will be calls to punish the EU Council for treason, but of course nothing will come of it.

If this goes through on Monday, there will be calls to punish the EU Council for treason, but of course nothing will come of it.

As far as I'm aware, the EU still takes more public money than any other organisation that has failed to produce audited accounts, and it's been doing so for more than a decade now. I think we can safely assume that they are above the law. And if they're not, as we've recently seen with the Lisbon treaty, they are quite capable of rewriting the law until they are, without needing any mandate from the people.

The United States is so clearly the new Roman Empire that it makes italmost cute that they keep denying it.

There is no clearer sign than this agreement that we areofficially living in a PAX AMERICANA in the 21st century.

I guess we better hope that the guy with the somewhat forcedsmile is nice to us.

If the US wants to have jurisdiction over the populations of theworld though, wouldn't it be only fair ("all men are equal...")to give citizens of the colonies (= world - China) a vote in theUS presidential election?

wouldn't it be only fair ("all men are equal...")to give citizens of the colonies (= world - China) a vote in theUS presidential election?

What good would that do? Corporations bought and paid for the US government long ago. It's all a big kabuki theater. They'll continue to get away with it too, because Americans continue to get shiny new gadgets and gizmos to keep them occupied and stupid.

Yeah, and the Roman Empire fell into darkness (mostly) because they couldn't retain control over their over-extended dominion. No nation-state has ever survived at such a large size. As soon as all the troops are over inX-istan or wherever, revolt would happen somewhere else.

Simply put, when the people aren't happy, there is no way to keep the peace. If these men abuse their powers, but the people are happy - whats to say that a blissfully happy life isn't a good life?

The American empire, such as it is, is only analogous to Rome in its scope, not at all in nature. For one, the US has not added to its directly controlled territory since WW2 regardless of numerous opportunities to do so (and is unlikely to do so ever again without an unforseeable radical change in the US approach to geopolitics). Secondly, rather than extracting tribute from its immense sphere of influence, instead the US sends ridiculous amounts of 'aid' everywhere, undermining its own ecomony to try to b

"For one, the US has not added to its directly controlled territory since WW2 regardless of numerous opportunities to do so"

- Unless you count active covert ops and financial support for the overthrow/assassination of disagreeable governments throughout Latin America. That's pretty direct control of the territory if you ask me.

The United States is so clearly the new Roman Empire that it makes it almost cute that they keep denying it.

US politicians have clearly been arguing for a unipolar world, with the US as the only superpower. So, I don't see why you think Americans are denying hegemony over the rest of the world.

However, there are two major differences between the US and the Roman Empire. First, the Europeans and Japanese aren't paying taxes to the US; in fact, the US is actually still effectively financing part of the Euro

We only recently gave the right to vote in Presidential elections to our territories and capitol city, what makes you think we'd want the proles from the rest of the world adding their voices to the din?

Besides, our ancient rallying cry of "no taxation without representation" has a flip side: if you have representation, expect to start paying taxes.

When evaluating the effect of passage type on reading rates, the narrative passages were read significantly faster than the news articles. in this experiment the 35 characters per line condition resulted in the highest comprehension score for the narrative passages. In the news article condition, the best comprehension score was at 75 cpl.

I believe in the right of every country to protect their sovereignty, and this sound like a gigantic ceding of that sovereignty, and as egregious as the formation and delegation of power to the EU. The absolute best way to avoid tyranny on a massive scale is to ensure the distribution of power to the greatest extent possible. That's why I believe in states' rights, and why I believe Europe is being a bunch of asshats right now. I'm as patriotic as they come, but I understand the capability of anyone -- Americans as much as anyone else -- to become drunk with power. In the same spirit, I applaud that no American financial data will be given to Europe. At least they got it half right.

The EU Council of Ministers is an unelected body of the usual group of money-grabbing power-hungry and our of touch morons who do whatever you want if you've got the cash. The EU parliament (which *is* an elected body) on the other hand, has thus far been pretty good at representing the wishes of its constituents and has managed to thwart the CoM's attempts to force through some corporate-sponsored legislation against the wishes of the citizenry on several occasions.

I think you are confusing the Commission with the Council of Ministers. The Commission is completely unelected.

The Council of Ministers, as the name says, consists of ministers from the member states' governments. These ministers differ depending on the topic that's being discussed, but they're always ministers.

So unless your ministers are unelected (depending on the country either directly or indirectly), it's not really correct to describe them as "an unelected body of the usual group of money-grabbing power-hungry and our of touch morons who do whatever you want if you've got the cash."

That said, it is true that the Council is used a lot by member states to launder legislation that they would never even dare to propose in their own country. Later on they will then claim at home that they are obliged "by Europe" to implement these unpopular measures nationally, while they themselves are the reason that "Europe" does so.

The Lisbon Treaty also has a downside in this respect in that it makes many decisions require less stringent majorities (or a majority rather than unanimity). The result is that it takes more countries to oppose bad proposals, and generally that delegations will be less likely to even try to oppose something, because this costs political capital and there is less chance to win anyway.

I dislike this deal but every single member of the EU Council has been elected in his/her own country with the right of representing that country. They are either Prime Ministers or Presidents. That said, they probably are the usual group of money-grabbing power-hungry and our of touch morons who do whatever you want if you've got the cash, but they have also been elected. http://www.consilium.europa.eu/showPage.aspx?id=429&lang=en [europa.eu]

Oh no. Nothing of the sort. You see, it is unethical and wrong for a country to spy wholesale on its own citizens. Most unethical. Many countries even explicitly ban the practice. But if another country does it...oh well, the information was already collected, right? So we might as well use it. You scratch my back...

You have a situation of power with out accountability. When you own government can do something, the good news is that there is accountability. You, the people, have the ability to call them to account on it. Now it does seem that people often don't do that, but you can. For that matter the government itself can demand accountability. One branch can get the records and check up on another branch.

However all that goes away when you are talking about another government. The US government is not accountable to

As all of the EU can use IBAN for European transfers, I don't see the issue. The only reason we're still stuck with SWIFT is when making a transfer to/from outside the EU anyway, which invariably means US / Canada, in which case they already have access to the data.

As all of the EU can use IBAN for European transfers, I don't see the issue.

The issue is that IBAN is also using SWIFT to transfer data between banks. IBAN is just a standard inside EU, SWIFT is the company that has the datacenters where it all is stored. So this really is a huge issue even if you don't use the SWIFT-code directly.

On a related note: I've never understood why our local government (Netherlands in my case) always wants to lick USA's ass so much. Sure you guys saved us from Hitler, thanks a bun

IBAN (International Bank Account Number) is only a consistent identification scheme for bank accounts so transfers can be processed with STP (straight-through processing, eg without manual intervention to fix spelling errors / typos / inconsistent punctuation - as a student I had that job in a bank). The actual transfers are made using TARGET (Trans-european Automated Real-time Gross settlement Express Transfer System). This is is based on SWIFT communications wit

This is exactly the reason we as Americans have to take the power back. If people keep treating us, we will answer back.

Let me give you an example.

Consider this situation. Your best online friend has just bought a new computer game. It is an online MMO. Now, as a true fan of MMO's, you're intrigued. You want to know how it's like. But to do that, your friend asks you to order a pizza for him. You say, okay, I'll order one for myself aswell. You type in "pizza for a gamer" to google and find out this gre

Doesn't matter. The cops can't arrest everyone. The 68's movement - those were times where people actually changed things to the better. Even if they had to squat and throw stones and molotovs as part of the strategy. Today, nobody stands up when insane laws are passed. "Ah, it's just those people up there doing their stuff."

Too much censorship of the mass media, too much promotion of consumerism. Watching stupid shows on TV and buying the latest and greatest products is what we westerners are told will make us happy. Well, the happiest people on this planet (according to a statistic I don't remember the name of) are the Colombians. They live in a country ridden by fifty years of civil war and a significant part of the population working 15 hours a day so they can eat. And they still enjoy life more than everyone else on the pl

Meaning you voted the wrong people into your own national and by consequence our European government.

The problem is , you only get the wrong ones , no matter what you choose for , because of the party system : you choose someone , but the party ultimately decides who gets to rule.And because the worst people are best at fighting for their place (because they only care for themselves , not the people ) , they are the ones who get the office.

Theres none good sides on it. Or why do you think US wont open their banking data back to EU?

It's just another case of USA forcing their laws, ideas and politics to other countries. Only taking, and not giving back. Fuck yeah! [youtube.com]

You may want to look into who provides a lot of the equipment, personnel and funding for U.N. and NATO peacekeeping forces. I think the US/EU relationship is pretty symbiotic. While the banking data probably won't be given to the EU, 'not giving back' is untrue.

I've looked into it. From Wikipedia: "About 4.5% of the troops and civilian police deployed in UN peacekeeping missions come from the European Union and less than one percent from the United States (USA)." The ten biggest troop contributors by country are 8 developing countries, France and Italy. Regarding UN troop funding - the reluctance and tardiness of the US to pay its UN contributions is legendary, and they are currently $1.3bn in arrears [wikipedia.org].

As to NATO troop contributions -- the US is making a lot of noise that the Europeans are not supporting their War of Terror "peacekeeping" missions in Iraq and Afghanistan enough; but they knew that they didn't have most EU countries' support when they set up to invade Iraq in the first place...

Sorry, but even though the initial support was different, there are a lot of similarities. The US took the lead in attacking those countries, mainly for its own benefit. The US did not have a good (if any) plan what to do after the initial "victory". Both countries are important for oil and gas reserves (Afghan pipeline). In both countries the US had a very ruthless way of handling insurgents, making sure that most of the population is now anti US. Both countries had little to nothing to do (at least direct

True again, but that didn't change the perceived necessity of invading those countries (*). In fact, many European nations probably objected simply because they had figured out that the US was going to invade no matter what, so opposing the invasions let them gain political points domestically, avoid paying, and still get what they wanted. The reason things worked out that way was because Bush was a moron.

(*) I think both invasions were a mistake, but the people supporting them genuninely thought it was necessary at the time.

I think you'll find the reasons that the majority of Europeans (not European nations) were against those wars was because: (A) They were illegal under international law and (B) The ensuing wars would result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of innocent civilians who never did anything to us - amongst others. Any 'nation' or government who represented the views of their citizens were in fact just doing their job properly. There were notable examples of governments giving the finger to their electorate, such as the British government of the war criminal Tony B-Liar, but as a whole, the bigger part of the population of Europe was against the unnecessary murder of millions of civilians.

To date it hasn't been shown that any of the warmongers who started these illegal wars felt they were 'necessary' for any reason. They may have said they felt it, but these are proven liars, so the balance of probability lies with the idea that their claimed feelings over the matter were merely another lie, and that's even before you consider that mere 'feelings' about how you act do not usurp the law.

To deny this obvious state of affairs is shamefully naive and the reason these b*stards keep getting away with their crimes. I mean, COME ON PEOPLE!!!

No, it proves what a travesty the UK and France made out of it.
Because they form the unholy alliance refusing full democratic power to the elected parliament and instead further the power of the commission (of governments).

But when the British tabloids are once again blasting 'Brussels' and it's 'unelected' bureaucrats they always forget about this little detail.

International bank operations in EU includes intra-EU transactions, between member states. The equivalent in the US, between US states, is not international.

I am far more concerned about the corporate espionage potential in this setup. The US intelligence services are already known to spy on EU companies and give that data to US companies for commercial advantage.

What's legal today might be illegal tomorrow. You don't think you'll end up on a list because you did what was legal when it was? Because, ya know, you did it before when it was legal, you might be doing it still when it's illegal...

Are you sure? The UK has created a new law every day for the last nine years [independent.co.uk]. Even if you're not in the UK, do you check every law your country passes to make sure you're not doing something newly illegal?

Without any doubt many Russians died for their country (or more accurately, were forced to die for their country), and they did indeed contribute to the defeat of the Nazis - *they* wouldn't have managed to do it by themselves, and remember, in the beginning, they were even allies. I'm not saying the Russians weren't necessary, but claiming that it was them who saved our asses is a gross exaggeration.

I always wondered what would have happened if Hitler hadn't break the Treaty of Non-Aggression; although I don't know if they could it by and watch the USSR take over the eastern countries while they were tied down in the west.

And the Russian collaboration allowed the Nazi's to establish their stronghold over Europe in the first place. Had Hitler not decided he wanted Stalin's head on a pike, there's no indication they would have lifted a finger.

There was NO Lend-Lease material delivered to reds before 1942. None, Zero, Nada, Zilch.

In other words US materiel got forwarded to soviets after they proved to the world they could take everything nazis could thrown at them head on.. and scraped by the skin of their prick to not collapse.

Moreover the more significant part of the aid was actually in stuff like trucks, tires, railroad rails and so on. Soviet tanks, planes and arms were just better at nazi killing than the US counterparts of the time.

To wit, soviets made hell of a lot more germans die for the Vaterland than Amis.

Or even pay a visit to Russia or any ex-soviet country. It's culturally a totally different world and it can be seen that US has and has had a little effect to them. Even McDonald's only landed in the largest cities 2000+.

McDonalds has been present in Moscow since the 1980s. Several locations in Kyiv appeared in the mid-1990s.

From what I'm told, the common implementation of the recipe of 'pizza' is very American and is different in Italy...

My (unscientific) experiments on a visit to Padova suggested that sausage-based pizzas may be more common in America (and here on Air Strip One) than in Italy. Or, it could be that I don't speak Italian. I did order a Pepperoni Pizza but it had (bell) peppers on it, not spicy sausage.

However, I was half expecting that, and it was very nice:-)

For added entertainment, watch a bunch of US Spanish speakers try and get tortillas in Spain. (Closest they got was "Mexican tortilla" which turned out to be Spani

There are hundreds of different pizza recipes here in Italy (the base is the same and the toppings vary). Some variations might be unique to the US but the pizzas I had in the US were no so different from the ones I have in Italy. There is basically one pizza and some country specific toppings.

By the way, I like the US pizzas more than the mid-to-north European ones. That probably means that they are closer to the Italian ones: you know, everybody prefers the taste of food he grown up with.

Ironically this will be used as an anti-EU story by the very same people who let it happen by rejecting the constitution last year. If the parliament had had this power last year, this wouldn't have happened. The people who complained that EU was not democratic enough, caused the EU remain that undemocratic, and rejected the attempts to improve it. At least, things will finally improve on tuesday.

Surprised? This is what the interior ministers came up with. Judging by what I see those jokers usually do, the job of interior minister seems to be to minimize citizen rights wherever possible, whether it serves any purpose or not.

The EU Council doesn't give a shit about European Parliament. Seriously, Iran is probably a better democracy than the EU. Most if not all democratic elements of the EU organization do not have any real power.

People keep repeating this, but it's like saying NAFTA isn't a democracy. The EU is not a country, it's a group of independent countries that have agreed to stop protecting their internal market from each other. The EC is chosen by governments of the member countries, all of which are democracies. Ambassadors and diplomats are not elected representatives either.

Giving the European Parliament actual power and making the EU Council an actual government would amount to turning the EU into a federation, a singl

The EU ceased being simply about an internal market the moment they gained the power to legislate. Giving the EU parliament actual power is a hell of alot better than allowing government (not parliamentary) representatives to legislate and having unanimous control over international treaties. But that is of course not nearly enough, the central EU "government" has far too much power. IMO, any decision made by the EU should be subject to veto by any national parliament along with a (required) referendum in a

Many european national traffic is going through SWIFT. (BE, UK, FR,......)All the details are now mandatory in any wire transfer instructions,All operations above 10.000 EUR must be made electronically

Bottom line : US and soon EU will be equiped with data to control financial fluxes and impose new taxes. (This is the real goal !)